Once the women lost sight of him completely and were forced to rely on Troi’s empathic abilities to stay on his trail. Troi could feel Keru’s grief, so similar to her own, burning white hot somewhere ahead of them. He masked it well, but there was fire raging under that calm, efficient exterior. If he did catch the ones who’d taken Ra-Havreii, she wasn’t sure if he or they would survive the encounter.

  Though Troi was too intent on maintaining her fix on Keru’s emotional aura to notice much else, Christine Vale continued to marvel at the woman’s ability to bear up.

  The death of her husband had obviously stripped her of every shred of hope she had once possessed, and yet here she was, doing her duty, doing her utmost to save the engineer.

   I’d be catatonic if I was in her skin, thought Vale. Catatonic or worse.

  Troi faltered suddenly, uttering a short ragged cry as she stumbled forward to the ground. Vale was with her in an instant, supporting her, keeping her on her feet.

  “You okay?” she said.

  “Feedback,” she said. “It’s Keru. He’s unconscious.”

  “But alive,” said Vale. She couldn’t take any more deaths today, and certainly not Keru’s. “He’s still alive?”

  Troi nodded. “There are two of them there, Christine,” she said. “Just over the next rise.”

  “Only two?”

  “I can sense them,” she said, rising. “They’re the same type of beings we encountered in space. I assume they’re Orishans.” Troi winced. “Their emotions are so alien,” she continued. “They’re getting easier to sort, but I think they’re waiting.”

  “For?”

  “Us,” said Troi.

  “Their mistake,” said Vale.

  Ch’ika’tik was unhappy. It was bad enough being out here in the open lattice with the midday sky peaking through the vault of vines above, but to have to approach the Shattered Place? To get there and to find these creatureswandering among the ebony Spires, creatures that were both as bizarre and as hideous as something from a hibernation fantasy?

  And the weapons these creatures had. The funny noises they made when they fired was a weak herald to the destruction of the wave they produced. The first one they had taken had been no trouble, but the second, the one who tracked them, caught them and attacked, that one was deadly.

  Ch’ika’tik was not taken out of the Dreaming caste, but she knew an ill omen when she saw it. This omen was as ill as they came.

  It was soft like a tk’sit, though nearly hairless and with too few arms. It made noises like a tk’solthough neither as loud nor as deep. It had no armor, no spikes, no venom, no acid. The ugly little monster didn’t even have wings for escaping. For all that, it had taken three of her sisters to bring the creature down without killing it.

  A’yujae’Tak had been quite clear about that.

  “Find it,” she had said about the one who had dared to direct a wave at Erykon’s Tear. “Find it and bring it to me alive.”

  As caste Maters went, A’yujae’Tak could be somewhat eccentric at times. She had come from the Dreamers and sometimes, when a thing should be clear as sparkle stone-killing anyone or anything that entered the Shattered Place, for instance-A’yujae’Tak would often find ways to make things foggy.

  Still, she was the Mater and her will was Ch’ika’tik’s law, as it was for all the others in the caste. Though she was just a soldier, just a scout, she knew this latest eccentricity of the Mater would prove to be trouble.

  She could still taste Tk’ok’iik’s pain as the alien wave had smashed into her, instantly stealing her consciousness. The Children of Erykon had nothing like this wave weapon.

  The second creature had been so much trouble that Chk’lok’tok had told her and Kk’tik to wait behind and break the final two before returning to the Spire.

  “These may be killed, yes?” said Kk’tik.

  “No,” Chk’lok’tok had told them and added a command chemical to her scent for emphasis. “Only break them and bring them to the Spire. And any of their wave devices as well. A’yujae’Tak desires them.”

  Kk’tik had been taken out of the Weaver caste and had difficulty with too much complexity. She was a done-or-not-done sort of drone. Still, she offered no protest, only mixed a hint of disappointment into her chemical aura.

  Now, waiting for the second set of ugly creatures to make their appearance, Kk’tik’s scent was full of questions.

  “Patience,” said Ch’ika’tik. “They will come to us or we will go to them. Then we break them and go home.”

  As if on cue, one of the creatures climbed up over the ridge of vines and stood there, its upper appendages extended above what Ch’ika’tik was fairly sure was its head. It was different again from the first two examples of whatever they were, smaller than both and with more of a mane than the second one though less than the first.

  “I [surrender/reveal myself] to you,” it said. It spoke strangely, with no real chemical mixture under the words for clarity or emphasis. In fact, its scent was unpleasantly static. Another mark against these things. The creature seemed to wish to go on speaking, but Kk’tik had her wave lance up and trained on its face.

  “Be still, ugly thing,” she said, and flooded her scent with a locking chemical. Whether command scents would work on these creatures remained to be seen, so Ch’ika’tik hung back, keeping her own lance targeted on the newcomer while Kk’tik took a closer look.

  Ch’ika’tik’s scent advised caution, but it was clear that Kk’tik was secure in their superiority over this thing. Unlike the last one, this creature seemed fairly docile. There might not be a need to break it before returning to the Spire.

  “It has no wave devices,” she said, still looking the creature over. “It smells…”

  “I can smell it, you stupid slug,” said Ch’ika’tik. “Just break it and let’s go.”

  “Wasn’t there another one of them?” said Kk’tik.

  “Yes,” said Ch’ika’tik. “Go get it and bring it back here. I will watch this one.”

  Kk’tik’s scent aura contracted until it was nearly imperceptible. As Ch’ika’tik took her position next to the new creature, she leaped up over the rise to capture the other. She didn’t have the sharpest mandibles when it came to planning, but when it came to following orders, she was perfect.

  Ch’ika’tik took a better look at the alien while she waited. Not enough eyes (if that’s what they were). No armor that she could see to protect that soft, mushy flesh. No scent variation. And its face continued to twist in that odd and unsettling manner.

  “Stop doing that, creature,” she said after a moment of watching it.

  “What?” it said.

  “That thing you do with your face,” she said. “The twisting. Showing your ugly teeth.”

  “It’s called [facial contortion/expression of pleasure],” it said.

  “Well, stop it.”

  But the creature didn’t stop and suddenly all Ch’ika’tik could think of was how awful, how terrifying it was to be outside, under the sky with the Eye looking down in displeasure at everything below. It could see her, she realized. It could see her and, in seeing, know that she had hoarded nutrient jelly that had been meant for the larvae, that she had made sport with one of the breeder males when she should have been guarding the Spire.

  The Spire! It would know about the Spire and their plans and then-and then-

  The merest thought of the Eye’s wrath over her and her people’s misdeeds sent Ch’ika’tik into a paroxysm born entirely of fear. She fell to the ground before the ugly creature, taking no comfort that it had at last stopped twisting its face that way. All she could think of was the Eye, the Eye, the Eye and its awful righteous anger if it ever found the Spire.

  She pulled her carapace close around herself, folding up into the same sort of ball she’d made during the first days of her martial training when the bigger pupae had scared her so. All she could think then was, Hide! Hide! Protect!Now, in the face of this new terror, it was all she could think again.